I got a look at the proposed Irvine Patriot Act. Like the federal version, Larry Agran’s has a lackadaisical approach to personal liberty. Where was he when Ashcroft could have used someone to guard his left flank?

Haven’t heard of this latest bit of Orwellian theater? Bone up, because it’s up for approval tonight at what could be the mother of all Irvine City Council meetings.

The “Rules for Ethical and Open Governance” and one of its main sections, “City Allegiance and Proper Conduct,” seem like lofty titles and worthwhile goals. But then Stalin called his masterpiece the “Five-Year Plan” and not the “Kill, Torture & Imprison Into Submission Plan.”

Two parts of the Irvine ethics law have drawn criticism. I’ll dispense with the most easily dispensable first.

Section 1-7-105 requires lobbyists to register with the city, pay fees and file quarterly reports on whom they lobby and whom they lobby for. The problem is that this could be applied to journalists who argue, as we often do, for access to city records and meetings.

And when you threaten journalists in Orange County, well, boy, you wake that sleeping litigious giant I like to refer to as the loquaciousJames E. Grossberg Esq.

He’s been on this proposed ordinance like a Piecemaker on a health inspector, churning out a 31/2-page (single-spaced) response that goes on about First Amendment cases involving The New York Times and just generally reducing this part of the proposed law to a mushy pulp of poorly structured good intentions. He’s like the big brother I never had.

So that’s why I’m not worried about this part of ordinance. If Irvine approves it and tries to enforce it, it’s tantamount to asking my loquacious friend to back his luxury SUV of choice up to the City Hall vault, throw open the tailgate and shovel in a few hundred Gs in attorney fees. And then take me to lunch.

More troubling is Sec. 1-6-104, titled “City allegiance and proper conduct,” which states members of the City Council and their aides “shall not engage in compensated employment for the purpose of lobbying for any private purpose or organization before any government agency.”

Common and commonly commended are prohibitions against city officials lobbying within their own jurisdictions. You even could make an argument for banning lobbying within other jurisdictions that have ongoing business with one’s own jurisdiction – say, two neighboring cities, or a city and a county. But to say a part-time official can’t make a living by lobbying anygovernmental agency is seen by some as discriminating against an entire class of worker.

I’ve got a feeling a judge would call it unconstitutional. But in the meantime, any part-time council member or aide who is a lobbyist, even outside of Irvine, would have to resign the lobbying job or the Irvine post, or be subject to prosecution and have the pleasure of going through the public-relations wringer and hiring attorneys.

Gee, I wonder, now: Do any of Irvine’s part-time council members or aides make their primary livings as lobbyists?

Why is this most troubling to me? Because absent any rational explanation about why lobbying in Rancho Cucamonga conflicts with Irvine city business, how do you rebut critics who say this part of the ordinance was drafted simply to silence one of the two voices of dissent on the City Council and Great Park board?

What do the city’s own attorneys think of this? It is unclear because their opinion was given to council members under seal, although that in itself could be an indication that the message inside might be something like, “You guys are about to really step in it.”

Agran has defended the ordinance as necessary to undo lobbying’s “sordid history in American politics.” It also could add another chapter to Irvine’s sordid history in American politics.

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